This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Project Jazz and Composition -- As a former school musician (clarinet and sax), I've been incubating on a number of links regarding the parallels between project management and the improvisational nature of jazz. Having touched on this briefly last year in the context of PM as conductor or band leader...
Tempo, vision, guidance, and assurances of harmony and timing are all provided by the conductor. Whether interpreting the clear strategy or a composer's score, or leading a tight ensemble of seasoned improvisors through new music being created on the fly, the occasional nods, cues, and appreciative responses are welcome input to the players.
...I had started to rough out more thinking on the "project jazz" metaphor...thinking that revolves around the importance of a plan or structure in which improvisation can easily feel where it fits and where it doesn't.
Many of the links I've come across on the subject have come via Stephen Norrie and Chris Corrigan. And now I see yesterday, Mr. Norrie has pointed to a piece by Robert Fritz that makes most of my preparatory thinking redundant:
"If we look to the history of the arts, our answers about self-organization are all there. The great experiments have been conducted, and the experience stands as a bright beacon of insight. The wisdom that had emerged was that improvisation was particularly useful in the context of a larger compositional process, and less useful without such a composition."
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